Tata Nano might get a turbocharged petrol engine

Tata Motors isn’t giving up on the Nano yet, the sales of the Nano might be flagging, but the company intends to change that. According to a source the Indian car major is working on a turbocharged version of the Nano. The interesting bit is that the turbocharged Nano might make it to markets this year during the festive season.

The turbocharged Nano project could be a strategy by Tata Motors to re-position the Nano as a ‘smart city car’ from the current ‘cheap car’ image it has been tagged with. Along with this the company is also rumoured to be working on an electric variant of the Nano to be called the Nano ‘e-rev’.

A company spokesperson said “Tata Motors is constantly working on upgrades, new variants, and new projects. We continue to look at new and refreshed products to be launched across various segments and, of course, test these vehicles and the same is applicable to the Nano.”

The source adds, “While we have high degree of technology-readiness and the programme offers several competitive strengths, it is difficult to predict the exact timeframe needed to create the right ecosystem for this to be a market-viable project.”

While Tata may wait for favourable policies for the electric and hybrid vehicles before it launched the Nano ‘e-rev’. We can expect the turbocharged vehicle facing not too many delays before it’s available in the showrooms. These are still early days to predict the cubic capacity of the engine or the number of cylinders the turbocharged Nano will use, all we can say is – it will be huge improvement in performance over the current model. The Nano is also the cheapest rear-wheel-drive car on sale in India today.